Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
And now, a dose of reality:
I tried to follow the advice of Goethe's quote. It resulted in my first failed career choice.
There are no guarantees that a person can create something that's worth something... no matter how hard they may want to. Just a fact of life. Keep it in mind, before you wake up one day and discover you've just spent 20 years you won't get back--on a boondoggle.
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True, but if you never tried, you might always have second thoughts and regrets.
My first run at being a writer occurred when I was laid off from my (longest held) job. I took all my savings, cashed in my 401k and gave 'er hell! I was able to make some significant strides in the two years it took me to use up that money, make some sales (particularly of non-fiction) and a few fiction sales, but was not able to get any significant fiction (which was my real dream) published and certainly was unable to make enough money from my writing to sustain my (and my kids) lifestyle (even a subsistence level) at the time. I went back to the corporate world and vowed that the writing I would do would be the things I wanted/enjoyed/had to do, not writing for money/to make a living. Since that time I've written mostly poetry - had a number of things published but have really not made any effort to publish or sell any of my writing.
I find myself currently at a point where I'm (once again?) sick of the corporate world and looking for alternatives ... still a number of years before I could successfully (if at all) retire .. so I've been considering getting the writing game going again, but am having a heck of a time with it. I do feel I'm getting closer but have yet to produce/publish anything of note since I began this phase a year or so ago. My thought is that if I could earn some money from the writing I just might be able to squeak by and slide into retirement and be able to 'do what I love.'